looks the goods. the only issue i can see, whether or not it matters is that the filter is flowing backwards with the mesh to outside air and the foam element towards the carb throats, giving the bigger surface area on the inside, though i think the pre filter should sort this issue out. i like it.

Rob, would you use this setup with flatslides or would you be looking for more air again?

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Simon , I looked at it and thought the same thing but trying to pull the foam off I think its not possible it too well made anr the foam looks like its moulded in the polly ends.
the foam is fairly open so it breaths actually to well and I would not use this filter for dirt riding by its self so the inner filter or sock doubles the thickness .
The main filter is what I use on the yellow bike, with the same sock sretched over the outside as the whole set up is in a ally box that I made.
Just that the air flow of the 2 is in reverse.
IF I was going to use pumpers so to get the max performance and wanted to use the standard plastic air box I would also do the top air box mod as well as all of this together might affect BST carbs in there standard form
Give me ring and I can explain it a bit better.
.

Yesterday I had a bit of a disaster. After a couple of weeks of not riding, I took my big out for a spin, and ten minutes into the ride it died on me while running in the 5th gear. just died. using the inertia I did try to jump-start it, but the rear wheel was locked. Fearing for the worst I pushed the e-start button, and surprisingly the engine turned, but was turning with a weird noise.
Considering that the bike has 50kkm on the clock, and the previous owner "restored" the rocker arms (not sure what that means though), I was almost guaranteed that the problem was rocker arm-related.
And my crystal ball was not wrong......

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After months of waiting for parts, drinking beer and some work my Big started up "after half a turn". I was astonished.
5 minutes of pure joy and excitement followed :dllama <= this is the emoticon for this

Anyhow, i let it work for a minute or so, it was giving some dark smoke - ill check on that tomorrow, probably oil from repairs everywhere...

Some new parts:
New camshaft
New rockers
New valve seals
New balancer chain
New piston rings
Some bearings, bits and bobs, seals there n there, base and top gaskets
Carb float valves
K&N air filter upgrade
Exhaust sorted out

something else i'm pretty sure i forgot to mention.

Anyhow. i'm glad it works.

If the smoke remains tomorrow, I'll get worried and really upset, as this is my first bigger Big repair. Moreover if its gonna be blueish - im fucked, as new gaskets were used and it will mean that ... ah who cares, i'm celebrating today. I'm glad I managed to do this all by myself, only help I got was to measure the cylinder/piston/rings for wear and to look into the valve head.
I plan to get some pics ready, but they are really shameful (big was dirty) and irratic - it was hard to get pics done with greasy hands (plus Im using nokia, which takes 2 minutes to focus one shot).
Keep you posted.

Wundis, Things will have to bed in so take it easy on the throttle for a couple of takes of fuel , the rings need to wear in to to old bore.
I hope you used genuine Suzuki valve stem seels.
well done so far.

Best way to seat new rings it to warm the engine until oil comes up to temp, then take it for a 10 minute ride. Go up through the gears using moderate to heavy throttle. Then use the engine to decelerate back down.

Don't hold high rpm or constant rpm.....just accelerate and decelerate. Being too gentle will not help the rings seat.

Let the engine cool a while then do this again.

Then change oil and filter.

Next do somewhat longer rides but don't do long droning stretches of motorway. Let the engine cool down after 20 min or so. You want heat/cool cycles. You want variable speeds to force the rings out against the bore but not holding one steady rpm. If it were me, I'd do another oil/filter change after about 100 miles or so.

Gidday Shane, Glad to here the bike is still a goer, the main jets I fitted to your bike are 125 mains , standard for the SR/42 are 117.5 so a substantle increase.
As for cutting the side of the air cleaner is does help it breath , but bare in mind that at higher speeds say 130 pluss you can sometimes get some turbulence at the intake especially with cross winds .
AS for going up through the gears and up to the normal riding speeds its good.
some foam contacted to the side cover would help in front of the opening or similiar like Ray tried a bit of plastic from a bottle to cause a vacume to the opening.
Another thing that is worth a try Shane would be to drill some holes in front of the snorkel but leave the snorkle in and try, maybe the best of both worlds.

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Thanks Rob. I use the bike daily at the moment and for the last two weeks and for several weeks to come this includes a trip up and back to my cousin's farm about 200 kms away. I've put a bigger case on the back and its great to take the tools up with and can go straight from road to farm laneways.

I've got four bikes here, the newest being a VStar 650 from 2000. So now I'm thinking about things like wheel bearings, steering head bearings etc. Now I know I can use things like hammer and punch etc but I would like to use the tools that make it easier. What do you guys recommend for things like blind bearing puller sets, wheel bearing service sets, steering bearing race removal tool, and so forth.

Great job Wundis nothing better than a machine you have built starting and running I put a camshaft and rockers in my 750 and had put plenty of oil around then when rebuilding, it smoked for a few minutes aswell but will be fine when the excess oil burns away . Just thought i would also post a link to a shop i got some heavy duty tyres from !! they have somw good stuff may be of interest http://www.zenoverland.com/

it starts fine, works fine for 20 seconds, then starts to work like a hit n miss engine + black smoke out of the exhaust.

i've measured the float level with calipers - the lines are perfectly paralel, the level is at 14,7 mm. float level setup was made by following this link

i thought the k&n filter might be the faulty bit, but no - the stock filter does absolutely the same thing.

now when i measured the float level with the transparent hose the first time (carbs off, fuel in, tidy measurement taken) the results were +-0mm.
Now I checked the fuel level after I shut down the engine - i got surprising results, both floats were way up, like +7 mm up. how is that possible? if I bend the adjustment tab on the carbs to compensate for the +7mm , the lines won't be anywhere near parallel.

i somehow get a feeling that the new replacement needle floats (oem) have weak springs and are not able to hold up the floats in the middle point, vibration does its job and the small springs get pushed in, thus raising the floats and flooding the carbs = ergo the black smoke and shitty run.

guys, i'm stuck and i need advice. buying another set of needle valves is a true robbery. bringing back these - dont think it will work like that.

it starts fine, works fine for 20 seconds, then starts to work like a hit n miss engine + black smoke out of the exhaust.

i've measured the float level with calipers - the lines are perfectly paralel, the level is at 14,7 mm. float level setup was made by following this link

i thought the k&n filter might be the faulty bit, but no - the stock filter does absolutely the same thing.

now when i measured the float level with the transparent hose the first time (carbs off, fuel in, tidy measurement taken) the results were +-0mm.
Now I checked the fuel level after I shut down the engine - i got surprising results, both floats were way up, like +7 mm up. how is that possible? if I bend the adjustment tab on the carbs to compensate for the +7mm , the lines won't be anywhere near parallel.

i somehow get a feeling that the new replacement needle floats (oem) have weak springs and are not able to hold up the floats in the middle point, vibration does its job and the small springs get pushed in, thus raising the floats and flooding the carbs = ergo the black smoke and shitty run.

guys, i'm stuck and i need advice. buying another set of needle valves is a true robbery. bringing back these - dont think it will work like that.

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If you set the float height with the carbies level on the bench then they will be out a bit because they sit on the bike at a slight angle but 7mm is far too much because of that. Before you start pulling things apart again try adjusting the mixture screw. You might get lucky.Cheers.

i'm a bit sceptic about trying to solve this issue with the mixture screw... afaik the mixture screw controls the mixture whilst iddling, and its influence on higher revs is rather small.
high float level on the other hand will influence the mixture on all ranges. gonna double-post to the bst bible page.

Wundis , If your floats are worn at the pivot points and the cage when the bike isn,t horizontal there would be a difference after setting float height.
Did you put new seels around the sometimes brass sometimes stainless seats, these O rings didn,t get sprayed with carb cleaner buy any chance.
How many klm,s on the bike because I have replaced floats and cages on bikes with 70k on them and these parts needed replaceing because I could not achive a correct height with the old ones .
Allso have you double checked to make sure you have the fuel lines on the correct location and not on the breather or ass up.

Wundis , If your floats are worn at the pivot points and the cage when the bike isn,t horizontal there would be a difference after setting float height.
Did you put new seels around the sometimes brass sometimes stainless seats, these O rings didn,t get sprayed with carb cleaner buy any chance.

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now that was a chaotic reply :) thanks anyway :)

i've used carb cleaner when i dissasembled everything. not after :) all o-rings are new, float cage looks straight and proper.
ill have a look at the orings again today (hopefully).

once again, the tricky bit is that when i measure the float height by pouring in fuel on carbs sitting on a bench - the level is ok. when mounted on the bike after all those vibrations - its way +. to me it looks like that small annoying spring in the float valves is too weak. the floats keep rising causing all of my problems.

i need to check if my theory is correct, must do the bench test again and tap them slightly to see if the level changes.

PS robmoto, did you compare the old floats and the new floats? could you tell what was worn visually? ive got my brothers big next to mine, i can check how his floats are... in secret of course.

All I remember is at the pivot point I could wobble it from all directions and easily see that it was a sloppy fit .
One would assume that both parts would be worn,
Have you got a inline filter as some rubbish my be stuck to the seat, yours being a SR/43 should have over flow pipes, leave the fuel on and see if it is leaking out the tubes .
Allso drain the bowls just to see if any crap has come through.
Try gentle taps with a screwdriver handle around the bowl area as one of the floats could be stuck.

SR/43 I don,t have one, but don,t they have a shaft that is connected to both enrichnes and a pull cable, if so, check that it is returning to full off when pushed to off.
Its all a process of illumination .

My DR800 has been at the Garage for 2 and a half weeks now.
They're still not able to get it to spark.
The generator was re-wound but no change. Next they suggested we change the cdi, I found one in Germany which is now fitted but still no joy.
I'm too scared to ask how many hours they're going to charge me for this. When I popped in on Saturday there were 5 of them crowded around the bike with electrical gizmo's trying to work it out.
I don't know if I can take any more of this.

My DR800 has been at the Garage for 2 and a half weeks now.
They're still not able to get it to spark.
The generator was re-wound but no change. Next they suggested we change the cdi, I found one in Germany which is now fitted but still no joy.
I'm too scared to ask how many hours they're going to charge me for this. When I popped in on Saturday there were 5 of them crowded around the bike with electrical gizmo's trying to work it out.
I don't know if I can take any more of this.

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do you have the manual for the bike? it goes through how to test each component quite thoroughly. test each component individually as per the book then start looking at how the system works as a whole. there are a few tricks with the big that several things need to be correct before it will start.
or you could skip town and never return

My DR800 has been at the Garage for 2 and a half weeks now.
They're still not able to get it to spark.
The generator was re-wound but no change. Next they suggested we change the cdi, I found one in Germany which is now fitted but still no joy.
I'm too scared to ask how many hours they're going to charge me for this. When I popped in on Saturday there were 5 of them crowded around the bike with electrical gizmo's trying to work it out.
I don't know if I can take any more of this.

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As Simosez suggests, go step by step - the schemes are in the manual, check the fuses thoroughly, check the cabling and contacts (especially ground) thoroughly, check the sparks, coils, high voltage cables, ignition key, ignition shut down button, clutch indicator (must be shortened), side stand indicator (must be shortened).

There have been a number of people with similar problems lately, remind me - it turns but theres no spark?